


you were always gold to me

by sublime_jumbles



Category: Political Animals
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Incest if you squint, Kinda, Weight Gain, Weight Issues, chubby!T.J.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-01-27 17:17:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1718390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sublime_jumbles/pseuds/sublime_jumbles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>T.J. gains a bit of weight during his recovery period, and Doug helps him through his insecurity.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you were always gold to me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [youwilllovemylaugh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/youwilllovemylaugh/gifts).



> HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY, FRAND!! I hope this gets you in all the right places.

Doug is finishing up reading the paper when he hears T.J. come in, cursing and muttering to himself. He hears the thump of a bag on the counter, hears the crisp sound of the freezer opening and closing, hears his brother hiss out a _shit_ , and gets up to investigate.

T.J. is leaning against the kitchen island, a bag of frozen peas slapped over one side of his face, and he grins sheepishly as Doug walks in. “Hey, Dougie,” he says. “What are you doing here?”

Doug shrugs. “Anne’s in San Francisco for a business thing,” he says. “Some style convention or something, and – I don’t know, I don’t like our place when she’s not in it. So I’m here.”

T.J. nods, looks around. “We the only ones home?”

“Yeah, and good thing,” says Doug, “because Mom and Dad would flip their shit if they saw this. What did you do? I thought we said no more getting into fights. And – where were you, _Costco_? What kind of fight did you get into at _Costco_?”

“I know,” says T.J., like he always does, “I know, Dougie, but there was this asshole talking shit, you know, he recognized me – you know how it is, Dougie, they can get mean when they think no one’s watching –”

“I know,” says Doug, coming closer. “I know. Let me see, huh? How bad is it?”

T.J. lowers the frozen peas, wincing. “It was in the parking lot,” he offers, like that makes it any better.

“Jesus,” Doug mutters, inspecting the bruise blooming beneath his left eye. It’s a nasty-looking shiner, just big enough to have been left by a substantial fist, with a scrape like maybe the guy was wearing a ring. His lower lip is split open too, drooling a thin stream of blood down his chin. T.J. notices, swipes at it with the back of his hand.

“Come on,” says Doug. “Let’s get you cleaned up,” and T.J. nods.

“One second,” he says, turning back to the grocery bag. The plastic grocery bag, Doug notes – T.J. always forgets to take the reusable ones from the garage.

T.J. shucks the bag from two pints of ice cream and sticks those in the freezer, balling up the bag and tossing it into the trash. He’s wearing the jeans Doug likes on him, just a little too small – although, thinks Doug, who is he kidding, all of T.J.’s jeans are too small these days – and just a little too low. Doug licks his lips.

“This guy,” he says, and T.J. turns back to him, eyes bright and expectant. “This guy, this asshole – what did he say to you?”

T.J.’s eyes dim, and Doug immediately regrets asking. He shrugs out of his leather jacket and hangs it on one of the pegs by the door before replying, “He said I looked better when I was doing coke.”

“Oh, T.J.,” Doug breathes, and T.J. shrugs, looks away, pulls his arms tight across his chest. He’s been doing so well, staying clean – almost three months now, and he’s on antidepressants, too, says he’s been feeling like a person again. But T.J. needs something to fall back on, always has, and in the absence of drugs and alcohol, he’s taken to comforting himself with food instead.

Doug thinks it was their mother who started it – as soon as T.J. moved back in, she began pushing food on him: _You’re too skinny, T.J., eat something; Here, honey, have a little more, you look famished; I know it’s hard, sweetheart, but you’ll feel better if you have something in your stomach_. It used to be commonplace to see T.J. sprawled out in one of the living room armchairs with a tumbler of liquor; now it’s more likely to see him sprawled on the couch with a bag of chips or a package of Oreos, working his way through seasons of TV at a time. He fills out his T-shirts and the rakish button-downs he wears when he’s in the spotlight, although he’s been trying to stay out of that recently. But there are still the paparazzi shots, T.J. carrying grocery bags or going to Starbucks or just getting the fucking mail, calling attention to his muffin top, his tiny double chin. There are columns in _Star_ and _Us_ dedicated to trying to figure out how much weight he’s put on, if it’s ten or fifteen or twenty, wondering when he’ll smarten up and buy some clothes that fit him, for God’s sake. Not one of them mentions his sobriety, and that pisses Doug off. Nobody cares to acknowledge how hard his brother has been working; nobody else has seen him sweaty and shaking as he detoxed, or seen him trying to chase off a craving, with a pint of ice cream, trying to fill the hole in himself somehow.

“Are you okay?” Doug asks now, and T.J. shrugs, tucking further into himself.

“Come on,” Doug says gently, putting a hand on T.J.’s arm. “Let’s clean you up.”

T.J. perches on the bathroom counter, like he used to back before they were shipped off to separate boarding schools, when he used to tease Doug for trying to shave the microscopic hairs on his chin, or when Doug would patch him up after another brawl with his classmates. Their first kiss happened like this, T.J. on the counter and Doug standing between his legs, dabbing a wet washcloth at a scrape on T.J.’s forehead, wiping away a bloody nose, the results of a tipsy skirmish at a friend’s house party. 

“Jesus, T.J.,” Doug had said then. “You gotta stop getting the shit kicked out of you.”

T.J. grinned. “This is nothing,” he said. “The other guy looks way worse.”

“Oh yeah?”

“ _Oh_ yeah,” said T.J., wincing away from the washcloth. “He was, like, this dudebro in a Hollister hoodie. He looked way worse before I even _touched_ him.”

Doug laughed, and that’s when T.J. leaned forward and pressed his lips to Doug’s, and Doug, surprising himself, had not pulled back. Since then it’s become a small, secret comfort, something a little more intimate than a hand on a shoulder or a rub on the back – nothing more than that. Just a little bit of extra affection between them. 

He leans into T.J. now, brushes their lips together. “Feel okay?”

T.J. shrugs, keeping his eyes lowered. “Been better,” he says, and when Doug tilts his face up to dab at the split on his lip, he can see the hurt deep in his eyes, the tightness of his jaw. 

“Hey,” he soothes, rubbing his thumb against the stubble on T.J.’s chin. “Hey. It’s okay. That guy was just some asshole, all right? He has no idea how hard you’re trying.”

T.J. shrugs again. “He’s right,” he mutters, grabbing at his stomach with one hand where it pooches over his waistband. “I don’t even fit in any of my clothes, Dougie.”

“We can get you some new ones,” Doug says gently. “Anne and I will go out; they won’t look twice at us.”

T.J. nods a little, jaw still clenched tight. “I guess,” he says, fingers still firmly gripping the roll of pudge around his waist. Doug covers his hand with his own, gently pries his fingers loose.

“Don’t do that,” he says softly. “Think about all the progress you’ve made. You haven’t used in _three months_ , T.J. That’s amazing. We’re all so proud of you. So don’t tear yourself down because some asshole at Costco can’t see that, okay?”

T.J. grumbles, but he doesn’t protest any further, and he lets Doug disinfect his scrape without complaint. But as he slides off the counter and straightens in front of the mirror, his hands move back to his stomach, squeezing the muffin top the tabloids are always so quick to point out. 

“Probably don’t fit in the same jeans anymore, do we?” he asks, a self-deprecating smirk curling his lips, and Doug smiles a little.

“Maybe not,” he says. “Don’t those get uncomfortable?”

“I’m used to it,” says T.J., jostling his belly in the mirror. Doug swallows hard. “I don’t think I’ve really fit into them for a good month, you know? It’s just routine, now.” He shrugs, turns away from the mirror. “I’m gonna change, though. No point in suffering if I’m just gonna be here the rest of the day.” He pauses, leaning closer to the mirror to inspect the bruise on his cheek. “Don’t have to look good to sit around stuffing my face, do I?”

He smiles crookedly as he says it, but Doug can’t bring himself to smile back. The derisive tone, the word choice – T.J. doesn’t talk about his weight or his eating habit unless he’s upset about it – they make Doug think that this fucking Costco interaction has knocked him back into a bad place.

So when T.J. emerges from his room, clad in an old pair of boarding school sweatpants, belly pushing out against the same snug T-shirt, Doug is waiting for him in the living room, a pint of strawberry ice cream and a spoon laid out on the coffee table.

“Here,” he says, when T.J. meets his eyes. “You’ll feel better.”

“That’s what everyone keeps telling me,” says T.J., rolling his eyes.

“Is it working?” asks Doug, and T.J. smiles.

“Let’s find out,” he says, flopping onto the couch. Beneath his T-shirt, his stomach jiggles a little; it’s just snug enough for Doug to see the indent of his navel through the fabric. He picks up the ice cream and pries off the lid, then digs the spoon in and playfully brings it to T.J.’s lips. T.J. accepts it, swallows, and then opens his mouth for more. He eats like the ice cream owes him something, and Doug suspects that if he weren’t being fed, his brother would be shoveling it down, pushing spoonful after spoonful down his throat until the pint was finished.

When the spoon finally scrapes bottom, T.J. leans back against the couch pillows, cradling his stomach in his hands. He burps and spreads his legs a little farther apart, grinning dopily at Doug. 

“Remember the time Mom and Dad laid bets on which one of us would gain the freshman fifteen the fastest?” he asks, and Doug blushes.

“Mom said me,” T.J. goes on, “because she thought I’d get hung up on all the pizza and beer that came with the parties, but Dad –”

“I know,” Doug interrupts. “Dad said me.”

“And Dad was _right_ ,” says T.J. smugly, and Doug’s blush deepens. He can stress-eat with the best of them when he’s under pressure, and he stress-ate himself into twenty-two extra pounds first semester freshman year. He carried the weight for the rest of the year, chubby-faced and soft-bellied, until he managed to work it off running around D.C. for an internship that summer. But he remembers how T.J. reacted the first time he saw it – no revulsion, no teasing, no laughing.

“Little bro!” he’d said, wrapping Doug into his arms. “Not so little, huh, but that’s okay. You look like you’ve been working hard.”

“Yeah,” says Doug now. “Dad was right, but so were you.”

“Hmmm?” says T.J., letting out another lazy belch. “What’d I say?”

“You said it looked like I’d been working hard,” Doug says, “and that’s how you look too, you know. You look like you’re making an effort.”

T.J., one hand massaging his belly, doesn’t respond, but he closes his eyes, and his mouth spreads into a small smile.

“Feel better?” Doug asks, and T.J.’s smile widens.

“Yeah.”


End file.
